On September 7, the day the town of Balakliya was liberated from the Ukrainian army, the retreating Russians fired a pair of rockets back into the area they had just fled. Their target was not the Ukrainian military, which had just nearly wiped out Russian troops from Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region. Instead, the rockets fell on the only school in the nearby village of Verbivka. Standing Tuesday outside the demolished building where she worked for 22 years as a professor of Ukrainian literature, Nadia Porotsenko said that until they destroyed it last week, the Russians had used the building as a base. “They completely destroyed our Alma Mater. It was a beautiful school.” A week after the stunningly successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that reversed much of Russia’s territorial gains earlier in the war, the attack on the school in Verbivka stands out as an attempt to rid itself of any evidence of how Russian forces ruled that part of Ukraine the previous six months. But the evidence of the brutal repression used to control Balakliya is too abundant to be completely written off. There is no indication, so far, of the kind of mass killing that Russian troops infamously committed in the Kiev suburb of Bucha. But here too Russia ruled by fear and intimidation. From hospital bed, Ukrainian commander details troops’ covert recapture of Kharkiv region The other local center of occupation was the police station in the center of Balakliya, a small industrial town with a population of 20,000 before the war. Room No. 7, on the second floor, was where residents suspected of harboring pro-Ukrainian sympathies were violently interrogated. Electrical cables, which Ukrainian police say were used to manage vibrations, hang from the ceiling. A wall in Room No. 7 is pierced by a cluster of bullet holes, about a meter above a small black chair, suggesting that the interrogators would shoot directly over the heads of their prisoners in an attempt to scare them into cooperation. Colonel Serhiy Boldinov, head of the investigative department of the Kharkiv regional police force, called the room a “torture chamber” and said documents found at the police station appeared to show the interrogations were conducted by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). . On the lower floor there are four small cells without windows. Colonel Boldinov said the Russian occupiers kept up to 10 men in a cell, although there were only two beds in each. Up to eight women at a time were kept in a separate room. In one of the men’s cells, someone chronicled their detention – starting on May 22 and ending exactly one month later – marking the days on the wall next to the occupation toilet. Locals said a small comment interpreted as pro-Ukrainian could lead to days or even weeks of interrogation and harsh treatment. “You couldn’t open your mouth, everyone was silent,” said Volodymyr Kapustan, a 43-year-old farmer in Verbivka. If someone said something the Russian soldiers didn’t like, “they threatened to shoot you in the legs. They would arrest you and take you to school.” A medical examiner gathers evidence at the Balakliya police station. Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail Prosecutors from Kharkiv Region inspect roads in Balaklia. Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail Sitting next to Mr Kapustan in an empty playground, another man shouted obscenities about Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We couldn’t say that before,” Mr. Kapustan said with a laugh. The violence continued until the last hours of the occupation of Balaklia. At the edge of a forest on the outskirts of the city on Tuesday, Ukrainian searchers recovered the bodies of two men who locals said were shot on September 7 as they passed a Russian checkpoint. “I want to ask Putin: Why did he kill my son? Why did he bring his men here with all their fearsome weapons?’ said Valentina Sepel, after identifying the body of her son Piotr. “Why hasn’t anyone stopped him yet? … I ask all the mothers who live there [in Russia] to rise up against this murderer.’ Valentina Shepel had to identify the body of her son Pyotr. He was killed on September 6. Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail Joy in northeast Ukraine as residents return after Russian occupation forces collapse Balakliya was the domino that brought down the rest of the Russian front in the Kharkiv region, a counteroffensive that continues a week later, with Ukrainian troops continuing to liberate towns and villages on Tuesday. Speaking in central Balakliya, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said Ukraine has retaken more than 3,800 square kilometers in the region since the beginning of the month, freeing about 150,000 people from Russian rule. Tuesday was the first time Ukrainian forces allowed the media into the newly recaptured areas. The trip to Balakliya, the regional center of Kharkiv, provides a snapshot of the fierce fighting that took place. The road, almost impassable in places due to destroyed bridges, is littered with damaged tanks and other armored vehicles, most of which are marked with the invaders’ “Z” symbol. Residents of Balakliya queue for humanitarian aid in the main square. Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail A convoy of three small cars heading towards Kharkiv was apparently destroyed by a rocket attack. It was not clear what had happened to the passengers. Gas stations and roadside factories were destroyed by heavy weapons fire. Locals said they were relieved to see the Ukrainian flag flying over Balaklia again. The day her city was liberated was Lyudmila Sysina’s birthday. The 64-year-old retired hairdresser and her husband stayed inside for most of the previous six months, despite having only sporadic water and electricity. The few stores that remained open after the start of the war had food, but few people in the city could afford the rising prices of imported goods from Russia. “It’s been a nightmare, it couldn’t have been worse,” Ms Sysina said as she patiently waited for a box of humanitarian aid delivered by truck on Tuesday. As she spoke, other desperate people pushed her to get boxes of food. The hardest part of living under occupation, several residents said, was feeling cut off from the outside world. Mobile phone signals disappeared in Balaklia in the early hours after the February 24 invasion, and locals could only receive messages and keep up with the news if they dared to walk to one of the few parts of town where it was still possible to receive a weak signal. . For Ms Sysina and her husband, this meant walking long distances knowing their two policeman sons were somewhere nearby, perhaps fighting against the Russian army, but not knowing if they were alive. Then came September 7th, Mrs. Sysina’s birthday, and the liberation. Her sons followed the first wave of troops to Balaklia. “They came to see me and we celebrated,” she said, wiping away tears. “My sons are good children.”
